Xbox One can’t display available hard drive space

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On November 22, the Xbox One will join the PS4 on store shelves and officially usher in the eighth generation of video games. We reviewed both consoles, with the PS4 sporting superior hardware and a brighter future for games, and the Xbox One boasting superior media features. Due to the consoles’ lack of support for external storage, neither is very supportive of viewing media that isn’t either purchased from Sony and Microsoft’s respective digital storefronts, or streaming from a service available on the console. The lack of storage support goes even further than this, it turns out, as the Xbox One doesn’t display the available capacity on the hard drive.

The lack of this bit of info isn’t detrimental, but it will get obnoxious for those that install games onto their Xbox One. Microsoft’s official reason for this decision is because the it wants the storage management on the Xbox One to be automatic — in that we’re not manually managing our storage space too often. You can, at least, view how much space each individual piece of software uses, so you can estimate how much free space is available on your hard drive.

The lack of this information also means that it’s not exactly clear how much free space your hard drive actually has out of the box. The PS4, by comparison, reserves around 100GB for the operating system and software — and likely future updates and other fiddly bits — and does display storage capacity.

It’s obnoxious that the Xbox One doesn’t display the amount of available storage space, but it won’t ruin your life. It’ll just make it a little more inconvenient when you’re running low on space.